Opportunities for Home Business

Archive for the ‘Wordpress’ Category

Web hosting sites are the most essential element on line business.  Yet there are thousands of people looking to run and create an online business without this most basic tool.

Make no mistake – without a website you CANNOT succeed online.  Creating a professional looking website these days is extremely easy with WordPress and web hosting is extremely affordable.

Installing a WordPress blog is not difficult with any professional web-hosting company and is a critical step for most individuals looking to establish an online presence.

But which web hosting site should you choose?

This would be dependent upon your own needs and your personal business model.

I have written several times about GVO and it does have its attractions, as a business opportunity.   Make no mistake, GVO offers quality web hosting and a suite of online tools that makes it an attractive overall package.  However it is expensive in comparison to other web hosting providers and you need to weigh up the entire package of GVO its tools and business opportunity and compare it to other services.

Here are some web hosting companies  and a brief description of the services that they provide.

HOSTGATOR

Hostgator provide quality web hosting services starting from $4.95 per month.  Their reputation is sound and while no web hosting provider can claim 100% up time, they have a very strong reliability record.
They are the web host provider of choice of many Internet Marketing professionals.

Highly recommended  low cost option – perhaps the best web hosting for beginners.

HOSTMONSTER

Another highly regarded web host provider which is perhaps a more attractive option for people looking to host multiple domains.  Enjoys an excellent reputation and have a strong reliability record.

STARTLOGIC

Startlogic don't have the profile of the two hosting providers listed above but offer a cheap reliable hosting service worth considering.

SITE BUILD IT/SITE SELL

Much more than a web hosting service.  Site Build It takes you by the hand and teaches you how to construct a search engine friendly web site from scratch.  Site Build It provides you with strong education, quality tools and even a back linking service.  In many respects it is a one stop shop.  However, it has some limitations.  As far as I understand, Site Build It provides websites but does not provide blogging capability – nor does it enable you to build a membership site.

GVO

GVO again provides many more alternatives than a simple web hosting providers. Platinum membership provides unlimited hosting space on unlimited domains along with products like Easy Video Producer, Web conferencing, a learning academy and an autoresponder.  This is a good package for people looking to participate in network marketing, mlm or the make money niche. 

Dominating Google a new quality SEO product from Mark Dulisse and Chris Freville is due for launch on June 15 2010 and this is sure to be one huge opportunity for online business owners looking to raise their Search engine rankings in any niche.

As part of the prelaunch, Mark has developed a great SEO  "instant results"   Plugin that automates much of the tedium in the SEO process.

Here's a brief summary of what it does

1.It fully automates a tedious "advanced" SEO task that most EXPERTS don't have time to implement, much less newbies…

2. Just by plugging it in and leaving it alone, your rankings in Google will improve, bringing you more traffic…

3. And the plugin displays your actual rankings and shows the hands-off improvement over time…

4. Not to mention the "value added" SEO Suggestions feature that gives you a "hit list" of even more valuable SEO pluginsyou can use to get bigger, better results…

5. AND you get it just for submitting your  email address…

If you are interested in improving your search engine rankings this is one plug in you need.

Go to Dominating Google Plug in right now and take advantage of Mark Dulisse's expertise

Home business opportunities present themselves almost everyday – too often the prospective home business entrepreneur doesn’t see the wood for the trees and by the time they realize that there is money to be made, the big dogs and the astute have already staked their claim and positioned themselves to be in the right place at the right time.
Halloween is a perfect example of this. 
People buy lots of Halloween costumes, masks and other gear and they buy lots of it online
By the time most of us start thinking of Halloween as a business opportunity(and to be frank being Australian, I don’t really think of it at all), there are already very professional highly ranked search engine friendly websites positioned on the first page of Google for all the appropriate keywords.
Generally at his time green entrepreneurs will be bombarded with lots of Halloween graphics and pre made sites that are designed with one thing in mind – to seperate the hopeful opportunity seeker from his hard earned cash.
To succeed with a Halloween targeted campaign takes careful planning and preparation and that planning and preparation should start at least three months before Halloween happens.
Make no mistake – Halloween is a very competitive and highly lucrative seasonal niche.
Last year alone, Brian Johnson, author of SEO Press and Autocontent Cash among other highly reputable products made over $26000 in  affiliate commissions and Adsense earnings over a three month period between September 1 and November 30 – and this was all generated with free generic search engine traffic – no Pay per click or other advertising medium was used.
This year Brian will be launching the Halloween Super Affiliate program with the direct aim of helping affiliates share in the profits of Halloween .  This is a serious program for serious marketers and will feature

• A 90 day super affiliate boot camp with live webinars from Brian Johnson
• Premium WordPress Theme Flex Squeeze
• 17 professional Halloween header graphics
• 3 month access to a powerful link building underground network
• And much more

The Halloween Super Affiliate program is due to launch late in June and I recommend that you keep an eye out for it – it promises to be huge.

The more I use WordPress, the more I wonder why it took me so long to be convinced by it.
One of the great things about WordPress is the handy plugins made available by developers to do all sorts of exciting stuff.

Some of the very best plug ins are the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins freely available  from developers.

I have been using Allin One SEO and it's a great plug in -used and recommended by some of the real SEO heavies like Alex Goad and Brian Johnson.

One of the benefits of the IM NIche Formula course (sorry guys now closed) run by Mark Dulisse is the ready availability of cutting edge technology.  Mark recommended Platinum SEO pack over All In One SEO and after trialling it on several blogs, I am gradually transferring it over to all of my blogs.  There is no doubt that this plug in has improved my search engine visibility.  One of the great things about his plug in – is that you can utilize it to tweak each individual post with a title, description and keywords.
I don't demonstrate this feature in the video – but if you make a blog post and then switch to edit you'll fine the Platinum SEO Pack  editing features towards the bottom of the page.

This is just another string to your bow as you promote your on line business -  opportunity, but a very important one nevertheless.  It won't give you #1 ranking on Google, but  it will help.

And in case you're wondering – yes I did pick up the spelling mistakes and fixed them up.
 

There are literally hundreds of tracking devices and hit counters online.  I've used many, and to be perfectly honest, I haven't been completely satisfied with any – ultimately because I want to track my entire process.  I wantto know click through rates on splash pages, squeeze page conversion rates, search engine, traffic direct traffic, affiliate traffic.  I want to know everything – the more I know, the more I can tweak and adjust things to deliver a better overall result for me.
Traditional adtrackers are by their very nature laborious.  I've tried many different ones and I'm never been really happy with posting cloaked tracking links and because I create loads of different pages and content I simply don't have the time to insert tracking links in every page I create.
When I used traditional website setups I found Google Analytics to be a great method of tracking visitors to  and through my sites.
When I switched to WordPress, I found it time consuming and frustrating to have to copy and paste the code into every blog post that I made.
Mark Dulisse came to the rescue by putting me on to a great little Google Analytics plug in that enables me to automate my visitor tracking on my site.
Here is a video showing you how to use it.
 

Here is the plugin - my compliments.

I've begun to use Google Analytics to track squeeze and splash page effectiveness as well and I'll post a seperate video for you on this shortly.
 

Home business opportunities are just that – opportunities.
What you choose to do with them and how you go about promoting them will ultimately determine your success.
Let’s be clear about this.
There are thousands of online programs promising that they have “unlocked the code”, “do ninety nine percent of the  work for you”, promise you “forced spillover” or some other bald faced lie.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but there are no shortcuts in this business. 
To succeed you need to establish yourself as a credible authority in your chosen niche.
There is no need to be alarmed by this.
It just takes a little thought and some determination to be different from  the vast crowd of opportunity seekers out there.  If you can offer quality information and advice to people, you will build a loyal following – a following that will ultimately repay you for your guidance.
Of course, there are some non negotiable assets that you require to build your reputation, your business and your brand.
They are a domain name, web-hosting and an auto-responder and your own genuine experience.
From there it is a relatively easy process to write a short report on a chosen service, technique  or product in your chosen niche and offer it as a free gift to potential subscribers.
“Wait a minute Mark, I can’t do this – I have no credibility, I’ve never made a sale,” I hear you say.
But there are things that you can do – if you have  a will to do it.
You could write a report on how to set up an autoresponder series correctly.
You could write a report on a new emerging social media program that you are aware of just describing the features and benefits – or even a report on automated Twitter income from a program like Twivert .
You could describe how you got 100 Twitter followers in a week or even better how to use Twitter properly
You could write a report on things to avoid like the plague (HYIP, Cyclers, Doublers, the list is endless really.)
You could join a program like Chitika (an Adsense alternative) and target it directly at people who have lost their Adsense accounts
You could write a report on how easy it is to set up a WordPress blog and the plugins you use.
You could write a report and review on a product that you use and like.

This is where you start your business and then you pass on good information, helpful hints and occasional recommendations.  If you do this people will be glad to receive you communications because you are stamping yourself as somebody different from the usual hype driven constant buy buy buy crowd that this industry is made up of.
Brand yourself as a voice of reason.
People will follow you.
But you need to build that relationship by recommending quality products and services.  Steer clear of the hype fueled “business opportunities” that are nothing more than pyramid scams. 
There are good products out there – products that educate , products that are essential tools and products that map out a business plan
Of course you can go a step further and create short videos and post them on you-tube – once you start the ball rolling, you can’t stop it.  In fact this post has given me enough fuel to write 6 posts.
“But Mark, I don’t know how to make my report available or how to make it a PDF document”  These things are learn-able, and easy when you know how.  What’s more once you’ve learned them you can teach them – via a report of course.
And to make matters easier the next post on this site will be instructional on how to do exactly that.
There is no excuse not to go down this road -it is the price of online success and will open many doors, the question is are you prepared to pay the price or are you willing to accept  a program owner’s word that their program will do it all for you.

Tompedia without doubt is the most comprehensive complete online marketing guide ever produced.  It is indeed as the name implies an online marketing encyclopedia.
Packed with over 40 hours of video instruction and a mass of printed material available both online and in printable PDF format.
Tompedia contains literally everything that you ever needed or wanted to know about marketing online and it is 100% accurate.
Written and developed by two Internet Marketing veterans, Graham Hamer and Jennifer Herold, Tompedia over delivers on content quality and presentation.

This is a must have publication for anyone looking to build a serious online business.

If there is one program you buy this year – this should be it.

Grab it now by going here.  This is the ultimate online marketing resource.
For a sneak preview, watch this video

Home Business Opportunities abound in the market place.  I use and recommend quite a few based upon my own home business experiences.
However. it has to be said that just because a Home Business Opportunity suits me and works for me it doesn’t necessarily mean that it works for you.
Here is a big tip about Home Business Opportunities.

You are the business.

You need to find opportunities that match your profile and interests and then you need to present those opportunities realistically and in a unique fashion that suits your personality profile.

There are literally thousands of people falling over themselves trying to promote “home business opportunities” by advertising generic affiliate pages.  This is akin to committing home business suicide.  Effectively you are branding the business opportunity and doing nothing to promote yourself.

So what do you do to promote yourself?

You start at the very beginning – with you.

Your home business opportunity lies within you, your experiences, your knowledge, your passion, your hobby, your dreams.  These are the things that make you an expert in many people’s eyes.  These are the things that represent your real home business opportunity.

How do you go about it?

On line you need essentially three things to turn your passion into a home business opportunity.

They are a high level domain name (by high level, I mean dot com, or dot net nothing else cuts it in the search engines); some website hosting and an autoresponder to follow up prospects.

With these three tools you can set up a profitable search engine friendly blog that can deliver income streams from places like Google Adsense, Chitika Premium Ads and Amazon for starters.  As you progress you can seek out affiliate programs and business opportunities that match your passion.

This is what program owners don’t want you to know, they want you to fall overyourself promoting their business opportunity on their behalf. Effectively they trap over 80% of their affiliates into becoming their promotional slave.

Don’t fall into that trap.

Take your knowledge and turn it into your business opportunity.

How much does all this cost?

Reliable Website hosting can be provided by Hostgator for as little as $4.99 per month.

Of course you’ll need to purchase a domain name and the folks at Hostgator will help you out with that- realistically you’re looking at $10 per year.

When you’ve got your blog set up and you’re getting some visitors you can trial a quality autoresponder for 30 days at Traffic Wave.  This ultimately will allow you to build relationships with interested people seeking more information and may well need to be matched to the affiliate programs that you end up promoting.  After30 days Traffic Wave costs $17.95 per month.

My recommendation is that you don’t rush out and get an autoresponder immediately.  Get your blog set up.  Work out your marketing strategy, make some posts and when you know that you’re getting traffic, work your autoresponder in to the process.
So initially, your home business can be up and running for as little as $15 with an ongoing $4.95 commitment.

How easy is this to do?

Well I decided to show you with this very easy to understand video, how easy it is to install a WordPress blog using cpanel.

Basically cpanel is your domain names back office and to understand how to use it I highly recommend this site Understanding cpanel.

In any case.  Here is the video.

There will be more coming soon.

I’ve had the misfortune to have one of my sites hacked in to by some unscrupulous low life and I am here to tell you that it cost me a lot of money, damaged my reputation, may have cost me at least one friendship (they were sending obscene material through my domain name) and took me too many hours to repair the damage.

I was very pleased to receive the following warning from Joel Therien, CEO of Kiosk/GVO